It was dark outside when we were awakened by a loud roaring noise, and a lurid glare which made our shadows revolve like a carousel. A moment later it had gone, leaving us in the dark. I got the automatic rifle I’d taken from Sam and crawled outside. I could hear a strong rhythmic pulsing, but nothing was visible from where I was standing. It took me several minutes to clamber back up the chute of fallen earth to the path, and from there to the top of the largest rock mass I could find.
At the eastern end of the island, a blinding glare shone down from the sky, an inverted wedge of brilliant light against which the tips of the trees between stood out stark and black. This also seemed to be the source of the noise. It was much louder here, a throbbing mechanical racket that came and went at intervals, ebbing and flowing.
“What’s happening?”
A figure had appeared in the darkness below. I recognized Andrea’s voice.
“It’s a helicopter! It must be the police. Get David!”
It seemed to take forever to get them both up the slope to the path. I had been astonished at how well David had coped with the extraordinary events of the day, but I knew that there would be a payback. Unfortunately he chose this moment to throw a major fit, screaming his head off and trying to wrestle himself away from both Andrea and me. Since her arm was out of action, and the terrain had been difficult to negotiate even in broad daylight, the timing could hardly have been worse.
I was terrified that the helicopter might swirl off into the night at any minute, its reconnaissance mission completed. Presumably someone must have been alarmed by the sound of gunfire and called the police, but I had no way of knowing what the situation was by now. Maybe Sam and Mark had patched things up, as Andrea had predicted they would, and would put on a united front to get rid of the cops. A few people smiling and waving might convince the helicopter crew that it had been a false alarm. If they flew off, we would be stranded there at the mercy of whoever had gained the upper hand.
So it was with increasing desperation that I hauled David and then Andrea up to the path, picked the boy up and started to run as fast as I could up the steep hillside. Everything looked different in the dark, but the knowledge I had gained of the island stood me in good stead and I was able to find the trail meandering through the woods to the clearing. I put David down. It was totally dark here, all light soaked up by the tall trees to either side. We tripped continually over roots and outcrops of rock. I fell heavily once, gashing my forehead on the branch of a tree and almost putting my eye out. I didn’t even feel the pain. Nothing seemed to matter except reaching the clearing before the helicopter abandoned us to our fate.
It was only when I at last emerged from the woods into the felled area above the compound that I realized that my panic had been unnecessary. As well as the helicopter hovering fifty feet above, there was a substantial force of uniformed men on the ground. The clearing looked bigger than I remembered it, more open and raw. It took me a moment to figure out why. The hall had completely disappeared. In its place lay a heap of ash and smoldering timbers.
“We’re safe!” I told Andrea, and kissed her impulsively.
“Dad?” said David. “Who’s that funny-looking man?”
I turned to look, and my elation vanished. A man in a blue uniform was crouched in firing position about twenty feet away, a large gun trained on us. For a moment I thought it was Mark. Then the man spoke into a walkie-talkie, and I realized that it was some kind of police sharpshooter.
“Throw down the gun!” someone shouted.
It was a man running up the trail toward us. It occurred to me for the first time that my sudden appearance, covered in blood and holding an automatic rifle, might be misconstrued. I tossed the rifle aside and picked up David. The running man reached us. He wasn’t in a uniform and I had never seen him before.
“Stay close to me,” he said. “They won’t fire as long as we’re together.”
I decided that he was crazy but friendly. We marched down the trail, David in my arms, Andrea at my side. As we approached the cleared space where the hall had been, a stout man wearing a khaki uniform and a Nelson Eddy hat advanced. He raised a bull horn.
I looked at Andrea and smiled. It was all so ridiculous. But we did what he said, as one humors a child.
I realized that he was talking to me. I started to explain who we were and what we were doing. Then I noticed that every officer present had a gun that was aimed in my direction. Everyone seemed very tense.
“Just do what he says!” shouted the man who had run up the trail to meet us.
I obediently took several paces sideways.
“Lie
Again I obeyed, sensing as I did so that I had already surrendered some considerable part of my constitutional rights. My arms were dragged behind my back and handcuffed securely together.
“Better Miranda him,” said a voice above me. “This one’s going to be huge. Watch some slick lawyer try and make a career by springing the son of a bitch on a technicality.”
Strong hands hauled me to my feet and patted every inch of my body while I was told I was under arrest and my rights were recited. I was not really paying attention, but I remember that the charges included assaulting a police officer. For the first time it occurred to me that this was not just a silly mistake which would all be cleared up in a few moments.
“This is ridiculous!” I said. “We’re innocent victims. They would have killed us if they could.”
The character in the hat cut me off.
“You can do all the talking you want back at the courthouse, son. No need to rush things. We’re operating on island time here.”
He turned to another man, also in a khaki uniform.
“Take him across, Lorne. Pete, you go along too. Keep him cuffed the whole time, and don’t take your eyes off of him.”
Other policemen surrounded Andrea and David as I was led away. I protested loudly that David was my son and begged them not to separate us, but no one paid any attention. It was as though I hadn’t spoken, as though I weren’t there. The man called Lorne gripped my arm and pushed me along. I noticed that there were dead bodies everywhere. I recognized Melissa, the blond woman who had kidnapped David. Her face and hands were badly burned and she had a terrible gaping wound in her back. As I surveyed the other corpses, strewn across the ground all around the burned-out shell of the hall, the full scale of what had occurred became apparent to me, and the gravity of my presumed involvement in it.
The two policemen steered me down the trail to the pier, holding me in a tight, impersonal grip. They kept up a bantering dialogue about the number of reporters and television people who would shortly descend on the islands, but neither spoke to me. I felt that I had been reduced to the status of an object to be moved from place to place, some large piece of furniture which no one wanted.
“Shit, it’ll be worse than a long weekend in August,” said the one called Lorne. “They’ll be crawling all over Friday. Show your ass on the street, someone’ll shove a microphone up it.”
“And the ferries? Forget it. Still, I guess it’s a two-way street. I was supposed to visit my sister tomorrow, over in La Conner, but now …”
“Looks like you got lucky, Pete. You might get over there with the car OK, but westbound? No fucking way.”
The scene at the landing was transformed out of all recognition. There were boats everywhere, some by the pier, others anchored offshore, maybe ten in all. Most had their engines running and their searchlights on, illuminating the scene in a weird pattern of intersecting beams. Two men in overalls and another wearing shorts and a polo shirt were bending over Andy’s body. The civilian nodded to the two deputies.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked in a shocked tone.
The one called Pete gestured up the trail.
“You think this is bad, wait’ll you see what’s waiting for you up there. This thing’s a regular massacre.”
“Guess I can forget about that cookout, then.”
